Blockchain Applications in the Financial Services Industry

Blockchain, a type of distributed ledger technology, enables the financial services industry to transform various complex business processes. Essentially, blockchain business solutions can facilitate fast, efficient, secure, and transparent data sharing. The financial services industry encompasses a wide range of businesses. 

It mainly includes companies that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, consumer-finance companies, stock brokerages, and investment funds. 

The back-office processes of these companies can gain substantial benefits from blockchain-powered attributes like transparency and security of data and transactions.

Benefits of Blockchain Applications in the Financial Services Industry

Currently, the infrastructure of the industry is slow, expensive, and heavily dependent on several intermediaries. Here, applying blockchain applications can improve workflow. Additionally, it can cut overhead significantly while delivering better, secure, and private financial services to businesses and individuals. 

Let's take a look at how blockchain in the financial services industry creates disruption.

Increased Efficiency

The financial services industry is moving towards a more globalized economy. It needs more effective protocols to manage the increasing complexity of cross-border transactions.

Traditionally, these transactions may take up to days or weeks to process. Blockchain provides mechanisms to automate the verification process and eliminate third-party authenticators' dependence on transactions, which usually requires manual processing.

Strengthened Security

In most centralized systems, there is one point of entry and one point of exit, which makes them vulnerable to diverse threats. However, blockchain provides a platform to establish a large network of peer-to-peer transactions with automated verification. It makes the network distributed among different nodes with no single point of failure.

Potential to Increase Digital Assets’ Value

Banking customers rarely get more than five or six percent of interest rates for savings accounts. Although the crypto market is subject to rapid fluctuations, potential returns on investments for owning digital assets remain higher. 

The value of a crypto project depends on how many peers are using its currency and the network. So, the more users indulging in the project, the more likely its digital assets will increase in value.

Lower Associated Costs

Smart contract-powered transactions require little to almost no associated costs. They eliminate the need for any domestic or international wire fees or overdrafts. 

With centralized banking systems, there are many hidden costs charged to support overhead and sustainability. 

With financial services created using blockchain, these issues remain at a complete minimum. Also, the tamper-proof, immutable ledger assists in preventing fraud, and the costs associated with legal services.

Explore: A Walk-through of Business Benefits with Blockchain Development Services

Blockchain Applications in the Financial Services Industry

Take a look at some prominent use cases for blockchain that have the potential to optimize various financial services significantly:

Efficient Cross-Border Payments

This use case is worth mentioning as it is one of the most important blockchain use cases. Blockchain creates possibilities for not only a stand-alone service but the entire global economy of cross-border transactions.

Transferring funds across borders is complex, slow, and expensive because of the centralized processes. DLT (distributed ledger technology) platforms like Corda, Ripple, and Stellar provide a decentralized peer-to-peer blockchain network to process cross-border transactions. 

These platforms provide financial organizations the capability to execute fast, cost-efficient, and secure millions of transactions across different time zones in seconds.

Related Post: Exploring Cross-border Payment Solutions Powered with Ripple Blockchain

Clearing and Settlements

Blockchain provides solutions to develop applications that can revolutionize the typical three-day clearing and settlement process. 

The current process is extremely complex and full of intricacy. It requires matching, reconciling, and resolving all counterparty balances across the global trading system. 

Blockchain enables the use of smart contracts to make these processes automated and frictionless.

Point of Sale (PoS) Systems

Decentralized PoS systems enable businesses to accept and process payments in cryptocurrencies. These systems eliminate businesses’ need to depend on costly merchant service programs and transaction fee overhead. The systems also assist companies in managing and analyzing the cash flow.

Smart Bond Contracts

Smart contract technology contains the potential to replace traditional bonds and provides investors with smart bonds. Also known as bond contracts, they use blockchain smart contracts to automate bond registry services and enable instant settlements.

Check It Out: Blockchain and Smart Contracts: Opportunities in Financial Services

Trading Platforms

Blockchain facilitates the reduced cost of trading by providing a new medium to exchange digital value or assets without any third party. Traditionally, stock exchange processes are similar to cross-border payments. They are slow, complex, and costly. 

Blockchain smart contract applications enable the automatic triggering of buying and selling actions on behalf of stakeholders without any intermediary. 

Existing trading processes involve documents, copies, and databases that require navigating through the bureaucracy and reconciling. Blockchain aims to eliminate all of these existing trade finance challenges.

Also, Visit: Decentralized Exchange Development Services

Final Thoughts

How will the financial services industry look like with blockchain-powered operations and processes?

Blockchain trading platforms and financial decentralized applications do not work to eliminate centralized banks. Instead, they force banks to adopt distributed ledger technology. 

These decentralized alternatives to financial services require banks to use blockchain. The technology facilitates faster cross-border payments, lower fees, and automated clearing and settlements. 

Blockchain applications in financial services push established financial services companies to operate on peer-to-peer networks for trustless, affordable, and faster services.

If you want to adopt blockchain technology in your financial firm, then partner with Oodles. Our blockchain experts assist you in developing custom blockchain solutions. Contact us today to get started.